Friday, February 20th, 2015

New Feature: Lending (a.k.a. “Circulation”)

We’ve just released a major new feature: lending tracking, or, as libraries call it, “circulation.”

Why are we doing this?

Regular members have long called for a simple way to track lending. But the strongest calls have come from the many small libraries that use LibraryThing–community centers, classrooms, museums, churches, synagogues, ashrams, health centers, masonic temples, etc. We’ve got a list of some our favorites.

Simple but Strong

Although simple to use, “Lending” was designed to be powerful enough for small libraries. Rather than just a field for a name, it’s a full system, with:

Who checked something out and when

Due dates and “overdue” status

“On hold,” “missing” an custom statuses

Summary information by transaction, status and patron

Control over what status information visitors see

Here’s a video I made explaining it:

If you don’t want to watch the video, or want more information, here it is in text.

Members who haven’t changed their catalog display styles will find the “Lending” column on style “B.” To add it to a style, go to “Settings.” (This used to be just a “cog” graphic next to the styles.)

You can find Lending summary information as a mode, together with tags, authors, etc.

Here’s how it looks in the catalog. Double-click to add or change a book’s lending status. Although there are a lot of fields, everything is optional. If you just want to track in/out, with no names or dates or due-dates, that’s fine:

Here’s what lending looks like on book pages–a little “book-pocket” icon () to edit lending status, and, if the book has a status, an area for showing it.

Here’s what it looks to add a status:

Selecting the “Lending” menu within the catalog () shows you summary and transaction information.

There are a lot of options here:

There’s also a “Lending Summary” section for your home page, available under Home > Books:

This is so awesome! Thanks for adding this. Lending was the one thing that was keeping LibraryThing from being the completly perfect way to keep track of all my books. I had my own work around, but this is way better!

Do you think there will ever be a way to set it to e-mail people when their book is overdue?

Words cannot expressive how amazing this is. Our small dance library has been working on a circulation system and this is exactly what we need. Moving on up from our manual written binder and going into LT full throttle.

Nice Feature! I will try to use the feature also for books I lend from others. Currently I use a collection called “not owned by myself” (nicht im Besitz) to denote those books I lend from libraries or friends.

Translation proposals for German language( I am not a librarian, so perhaps not all translations are the one used by professional libraries…)

This is SO wonderful and helps out TREMENDOUSLY! Thank you all SO much for working so hard to provide a FREE service for those of us who do not have the funds to pay monthly for an online library service! You are a true blessing!

Will the scan feature work together with the lending feature? Our church is hoping to come up with a way for patrons to scan a library card, then scan the book(s) they are checking out, and have that enter into LibraryThing.

I finally got around to trying this out in preparation for back to school at our parent volunteer run elementary school library, and it is wonderful. Easy enough for my non-librarian volunteers (and 6th graders), simple, does what we need. Now maybe we won’t lose all our graphic novels every year! THANK YOU.

Unfortunately, we’re not planning the ability to import patrons for the initial release of TinyCat—they’ll need to be entered manually.

As our lending feature currently exists, patron records consist of one free-text box, for the patrons’ names. You can include classroom numbers in that box, as well, but the classroom number will be in the same field as the patron name. This is likely to change with TinyCat. Although we’re still nailing down what information/fields will be included, I can say that there will probably be an “other” field which you could use for storing classroom numbers.

Thanks for the feedback. We’re looking into adding better support for multiple copies in the near future. In the meantime, your best bet is to maintain two separate copies in your LibraryThing account—that is, add the same book to your library twice. That way you can manage separate lending statuses for each copy.

I hope this helps. Please feel free to email me at info@librarything.com if you have any further questions.

I am having a little difficulty. It was not defaulted to “B” on my screen – but I added it. There is no button or link anywhere that gives me access to the Lending feature itself. I watched the video and read the blog post, but those features are not on my screen. I just opened the account, so I don’t think I am on an old version. Please help. Thank you.

Sorry to hear you’re having trouble. LibraryThing being a website, there’s no version to maintain—you’re all up to date!

I do see the Lending column on your B Display Style in Your Books now. To check out an item, simply double-click the field next to the book you’d like to check out, and that will pull up the Lending box, where you can enter patron details, set due dates, and more.

You can find your lending history and a list of your patrons (as well as add and edit them) here: http://www.librarything.com/circulation/NorthAmericanMartyrs. You can also reach the Lending page from Your Books by clicking the drop-down menu at the top of Your Books, next to the “Covers” button, then select “Lending.”

I hope this information helps. If you have any further questions, please email us at info@librarything.com.

Not at this time, I’m afraid. We hope to add it in the future, but are currently focusing on rolling out our Android version! Feel free to email us if you have any further questions: info@librarything.com.

I seem to have an issue putting a Checked Out book on hold. The status goes away on the patron that checked out the book… no longer overdue… no longer actually an active item. Am I not to put a book on hold that is already checked out? Thanks for your help and the wonderful website!

This is because in LT, each book can only have one circulation status at a time. We have not developed a hold “queue” yet, such that books that are currently checked out to one patron can be placed on hold for another before they are returned. This is something we’re discussing adding in the future, but it’s going to be pretty tricky, and will be some time before we introduce this feature. Feel free to email me at info@librarything.com if I can be of any further help, or if you have any questions.

Unfortunately, there is no way to check a book out from another member’s library. You must be logged in to their account in order to access the lending feature. Please email us (info@librarything.com) if you have any further questions.

To add to what Loranne said, we also have TinyCat for LibraryThing, which is free to use personally (for your family and friends). TinyCat transforms your LibraryThing library into a real, online catalog that you can share with family and friends, show off your library, allow self-checkouts (like you want), and have better features for tracking patrons and lending data.

You can find more info and sign up for TinyCat from our brochure site here: https://www.librarycat.org/. If you have questions about TinyCat, you can email me (Kristi) at tinycat@librarything.com, or join us for one of our weekly webinars (held every Wednesday at 1pm Eastern). I hope this helps!

You’ll need to create a separate record (i.e. add this book to your library three times) for each individual copy. That’s the only way you’ll be able to mark the same title as being checked out to multiple patrons. The number of copies field does not create a record for each copy. I hope this helps! Please email us at info@librarything.com if you have any further questions.

It looks like I wasn’t the only one looking for a way
to track loaned out books!

This app far exceeds what I was expecting. It has all
the bells and whistles anyone could want. Thank you
for all the time and effort (and helpers) that went into
the program. And thank you for your timely response.

Just finished watching our video on Lending a few days ago.
Added Lending to Style B per these instructions: Members who haven’t changed their catalog display styles will find the “Lending” column on style “B.” To add it to a style, go to “Settings.” (This used to be just a “cog” graphic next to the styles.)
But Lending does not show up on the menu like this Selecting the “Lending” menu within the catalog () shows you summary and transaction information. What am I not understanding? We are a small church library and using LibraryThing which is wonderful!!

I’m afraid I don’t quite follow your question, Cheryl. Could you please email us some more details about what you’re trying to do? I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have from here: info@librarything.com.